Understanding Greek road signs

Understanding Greek road signs

8/12/2015 2:42:49 PM

Yes, there is an official transliteration scheme from the Greek alphabet to Roman. The Greek Government uses the Hellenic Organization for Standardization (ELOT) standard 743. Wikipedia has the full table: I’ll not reproduce it here, since Stack Exchange doesn’t support tables and the Wikipedia table also includes other transliteration schemes.

Note that, although Greek is a phonetic language (the spelling tells you exactly how to pronounce the word, though the same sound can be spelled in different ways), ELOT.743 doesn’t respect that. So, for example, “γκ” is pronounced like the “g” in “goat” but is transliterated “gk”. Note also that there are several of these two-letter combinations and you need to know those to pronounce words correctly: it’s not enough just to know the sound of each letter. On the other hand, if you just want to be able to recognize words, it doesn’t really matter how you pronounce them in your own car.

8/12/2015 1:05:43 PM

Wikipedia has a page on the Greek Alphabet, showing the conversion between its letters and the ones used in the Latin alphabet. This will help you decipher the text, but not the meaning. Below is a screenshot of the conversion table which can be found on the linked page:

Greek to Latin alphabet

Last time I went on a road trip in Greece (2008) I don’t remember reading that many road signs in Latin alphabet, but I might obviously be wrong. In my opinion the best tip I can give you is to learn the Greek names of the place you will be heading to, and their representation in Greek alphabet. To this purpose, here is a Wikipedia page with a list of the largest cities in Greece. Following on the individual page for each city you will find their modern Greek names. Just to give you a few examples of you should expect to read (signs are spelt in UPPERCASE):

  • English Name – Greek Name – Greek Spelling
  • Athens – Athina – ΑΘΗΝΑ
  • Thessaloniki – Thessaloniki – ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗ
  • Patras – Patra – ΠΑΤΡΑ
  • Sparta – Sparti – ΣΠΑΡΤΗ

You should also probably learn keywords such as city centre, beach, no parking, and any other phrase you might typically find on a road sign.

For more general tips on driving in Greece, this website provides a set of helpful guidelines on the topic.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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